Pornography and Civil Rights: A New Day for Women's Equality

been loyal to her husband, she has stayed with him, the way

women are supposed to. She may be badly hurt over a period

of years. When she leaves home, she is often treated as a pariah, told the brutality is her own fault. Now think of the woman forced into prostitution. She is without the so-called

protections of a respectable life. She has been abandoned, if

not injured in the first place, by her family. Society has no

place for her and despises her for what she has been doing.

The photographs of her engaging in violating sex acts—violating of her—usually show her smiling, as if she enjoyed being used or hurt. Where can she turn? Where can she run?

Who wil believe her? Who wil help her? Will you? (If you

won’t, don’t assume anyone else will. )

The pimp or pornographer wil come after her. If he is her

husband or her father, he wil have a legal right to her. He

wil be violent toward her and toward anyone who tries to help

her. She wil be terribly hurt from the life she has been leading: she wil be injured from the pornography and prostitution; she may be addicted to many drugs; she wil be filled with anger and self-hate and despair.

Bat ered women’s shelters, of which there are not enough,

many of which are understaffed, wil probably not of er her

shelter. They are afraid of the pimps and they are afraid of

the host of antisocial behaviors that the woman herself may

demonstrate. Rape crisis centers do not have resources to of er

shelter at al but they are also not prepared to counsel prostitutes, even though most have been raped many times and suf er the trauma of multiple rape.

The women in pornography are the first victims of pornography. The pornographers, not the women they hurt, are responsible for pornography. The men who buy and use the pornography are responsible for pornography, not the

women who are violated to make the product they so enjoy.

Questions and Answers

71

And the society that protects the pornography is responsible

for pornography: the courts that value the so-called rights of

the pornographers over the humanity, the dignity, the civil

equality of women; the publishers and writers who keep protecting the trafficking in women as if the commercial violation of women were a basic right of publishing; the lawyers, the

politicians, the media, who congregate to chant self-righteous

litanies in worship of the Constitution while women are raped

for fun and profit under its protection.

Q: Isn’t pornography just a symptom, not a cause, of

misogyny? Pornography didn’t cause patriarchy, did it? It’s

not really important, is it?

A: An incredible double standard is always applied to thinking about or doing anything about pornography.

If pornography hurts women now, doesn’t something need

to be done about it? I f women are hurt in making pornography,

doesn’t something need to be done? If pornography is used to

choreograph and execute rape, incest, battery, and forcing

women into prostitution, doesn’t something need to be done?

If pornography actually creates attitudes and behaviors of

bigotry and aggression against women, as many laboratory studies demonstrate, doesn’t something need to be done? If pornography causes rape, or sexualized torture, or increases sadism against women, or plays a role in serial murders, or contributes substantially to legitimizing violence against women, isn’t it important to do something about pornography? If pornography spreads woman hating and rape as mass entertainment, how can feminists ignore or be indif erent to it as a political issue of equality? Think about the maxim “Equal pay for equal work. ” We understand that women are hurt by being